The Ballet Shoes Affair
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Why does Illya have a pair of ballet shoes? Inspired by a picture prompt on the Section VII MFU livejournal site, but can I get my head around livejournal? No, I can not. Pre-slash.


'Illya,' Napoleon said, eyeing the delicately pink pair of satin shoes in his partner's hand. 'Don't tell me that ballet is one of your hitherto unknown talents?'

Illya was sitting at his desk behind a sheaf of paperwork, but he looked up long enough to give him a withering look through the green tint of his reading glasses. 'Napoleon, these are pointe shoes. Men don't go _en pointe_.'

Napoleon took the shoes and examined them. Up close they were far from delicate. They were smudged, dirty, the pink darning on the hard block toes scuffed and worn, and the ribbons frayed. Inside they held the faint scent of foot sweat, and he could see the imprints of the owner's toes in the end. The impression here was one of strength and animal physicality, a far cry from the ethereal vision ballerinas presented on stage.

'They don't, huh?' he asked.

Illya shook his head. 'They don't. They can't. Or at least, they say they can't; I've always wondered.' He looked up, his gaze suddenly piercing. 'Haven't you ever read Noel Streatfeild?' At Napoleon's blank look he said, 'No, neither have I. I am not a little English girl.'

'Then how do you – '

'One of my professors at Cambridge had a little English girl. Noel Streatfeild was her god.'

'So your knowledge of ballet doesn't come from Noel Streatfeild. Where does it come from?'

Illya favoured him with an ironic smile. 'Napoleon, I am Russian, after all.'

'You're from the Ukraine. Are you telling me you hoofed it up to Moscow and stalked a member of the Bolshoi?'

Illya shrugged. 'The Bolshoi is not the only Russian ballet company.'

Napoleon had to restrain a growl. His secretive partner drove him to the wall almost every day with these kind of ambiguities and unanswered questions.

'You know, I think keeping things close to your chest has gotten to be more than a habit,' he complained. 'It's an obsession. You like to carefully craft that air of mystique. Either that, or you're just a very suspicious little man.'

Illya dropped the shoes back into the duffel bag on the floor, and smiled. 'Napoleon, I once dated a dancer. Not for very long, because – '

'Because?' Napoleon nudged him. He picked up the duffel and looked into it to see other shoes, and what might have been a pair of high denier pink tights.

'Don't ever date a dancer,' Illya warned him. 'Narcissistic. Obsessed. Driven. They spend all their money on new shoes and new tights and darning thread. And they don't just try to control what they eat. They try to control what _you_ eat too.'

Napoleon snorted at the idea of anyone, anyone at all, trying to control what Illya put in his mouth. Feeding Illya was a full time job.

'There was no time for anything but sex and workouts and barre,' Illya concluded rather ruefully.

If Napoleon had dared to tell him that his pout was adorable, Illya would have knocked him on his butt. He knew that, and that's why he said nothing. But he didn't know why any dancer would ignore the obvious benefits of being with Illya in favour of workouts and barre. Sex with Illya would be good. Sex with Illya would be exquisite, he was sure, because certainly Illya would apply himself to sex with the intense dedication he used in every other part of his life. But other parts of being with Illya were priceless too. Walking with Illya, eating with Illya and letting him steal the food off your plate, watching the way Illya's hair lit up in morning sunlight and evening sunsets, talking with Illya about every subject from Nietzsche to how they got the stripes into toothpaste, and everything between and around. Unless Illya had meant…

'Did she make you do workouts and barre with her?'

Illya just gave him a look, and he knew he would never find out the answer. But he thought he saw the faintest trace of a blush in his fair complexion, and that made him wonder all the more, because Illya was such that the idea of being caught at a barre doing ballet would not embarrass him in the slightest.

'Illya, why do you have a duffel bag full of pointe shoes in our office?' he asked finally. It seemed that a straight question would be the only way he might have a chance at a straight answer.

'Because it is my only clue to who shot Brian Langford last night,' Illya said without a hint of emotion, turning over some papers on his desk.

Napoleon sat down hard, only realising as he hit the seat off centre that he hadn't even made sure it was there first.

'Brian – Brian Langford?'

Illya looked up then, pulling off his tinted reading glasses and laying them soundlessly on the desk.

'I'm sorry, Napoleon. I thought you knew,' he said, and now there was real warmth and contrition in his voice. 'They found him outside the stage door to the Hershey Theatre at six a.m., and this was in his hand. I guess the person who shot him didn't think it was important, but he obviously did.'

'So we're on the trail of a homicidal ballerina?' Napoleon asked, letting the shock of Brian's death churn over deep inside. Brian hadn't been with U.N.C.L.E. very long; he wasn't a close friend. But it was always a shock to hear of a fellow agent's death.

'No, we are not. A homicidal ballerina would not have left a bag of incriminating ballet shoes at the scene of the crime.' Illya picked up his glasses, but instead of putting them on he inserted the end of one of the arms into his mouth and tongued it delicately in a way that sent shivers down Napoleon's spine. 'No, we are on the trail of something entirely different...'


End file.
